I was surprised that Star Path was as good as it was. On my reader it's only 125 pages. How can something so short actually have an emotional merit, or a decent plot? But it does.
I'll probably end up mentioning the length of this multiple times, simply because I'm stunned that I enjoyed it so much. The summary sounded interesting enough, but I hadn't expected anything like what it turned out to be.
The characters were all really entertaining. We know virtually nothing about everyone, and yet I still felt like I had a good grasp of their personalities. Dren meets Arella, Mutt, and Pilot in a day and then thrust into really impossible circumstances. It only makes sense that he would bond with them so easily after that, but what was shocking was that I formed an attachment as well. The same went for the characters introduced later: Sinto and Felix. The timeline shows that Dren spent several months total in the company of these people, but we don't see much of that in the story. Yet there's still a connection.
The plot itself was awesome. I feel like it was reminiscent of Star Wars in a sense, only because I got to see so many different planets and species of animals in such a small timeframe. I bounced between several different settings, yet it was still easy to follow what was happening and where the characters were. The antagonist was believable and despicable. And frankly he's diabolical. I mean, who comes up with such a convoluted and kind of ingenious plot as that?
Another thing I have to comment on is the descriptions. It was extremely easy to picture everything in my mind while I was reading because the descriptions were just so thorough without being tedious. I find that amazing in and of itself! The technology within the story was just plain really cool.
My only complaint is that it was too short. I wanted it more. I'm not really sure what exactly, I mean it made perfect sense. I just wanted the bonding scenes longer maybe, or the action sequences longer.
Regardless, it is an awesome story and I highly recommend it.